Arroyo Seco's Playa Grande beach suddenly harder to get to...

ARROYO SECO, Jalisco, Mexico - For years the beach road along Arroyo Seco's Playa Grande extended past the row of houses, crossing private land to get to a small beach area that half the village seemed to go to every weekend.

The road also gave easy access for people to drive vehicles to the lagoon, where fishing isn't just sport - it's livelihood.

And the same area has been adopted by legions of surfers, depending on the swell and wind, of course.

But Thursday morning the village woke up to find that the property owner had closed off that road by digging a trench and mounding up an impressive looking sandpile.


Roadblock from the north


The trench shows the owner is serious

For now, persons with four-wheel drive vehicles still can sneak around the end of the fence towards the beach. But if the owner fixes the barbed-wire, extended it to his property line towards the ocean, anyone driving will actually have to go down on the soft sand of the beach if they want to get to the swimming beach, the lagoon, and the beach of El Tecuan. And that sand can be very soft.

The stories as to why the owner suddenly closed the area off vary: there had been vandalism, there was criminal activity, the roadblock is a precursor to a massive development.

?Quien sabe?

In the meantime, a delegation of fisherman from Arroyo Seco have been complaining loudly to anyone who will listen in the government.

That complaining might be a little louder soon when the campers (from Guadalajara and elsewhere) begin arriving for their Semana Santa holiday and find out they can't get to the beach areas where they have been coming for years.

Watch out La Manzanilla, they might in your direction.


Playa Grande view from the hilltop


Still accessible by quad

Taking a quad tour of Arroyo Seco beaches at Semana Santa

ARROYO SECO, Jalisco, Mexico - The wind has been piping up to 30+ knots during the afternoons for the past few days, so the Admiral and I - and our neighbor Brianda - headed out Friday early on the quad to reconnoiter the beaches to see how many vacacionistas have invaded our normally traquil beaches.

Not too many, it seems, though earlier today a huge blue tour bus headed to the beach, loaded with tourists. It's the first tour bus I have ever seen come through town. Judging from the way people in the village came out of their houses to gawk at the bus, they haven't ever seen anyone brave enough to come down these roads with a rig that big before either.


Playa Grande on Good Friday

Playa Grande and Playa Chica were both quiet, partly I suppose because of the winds that tore the awning down off the original Grey Goose II trailer today. And it might also be because the beaches are both on open ocean, which Friday was pumping huge waves onto the sand and very few people were willing to risk the undertow to go swimming. There were some pretty sizable encampments along Playa Grande, tucked back in out of the wind. Today even more carloads of people with camping gear were headed out for a few days of fun in the sun.

While Easter is tomorrow, vacations for many people continue right through next week.

And, of course, with the vacacionistas has come an influx of quads and motorcycles - bad news for people who don't like hotrodding kids, good news for the tiendas in town who are selling a lot of gasoline.


Follow that quad


Camping at the end of the beach

Makeshift volleyball nets were all over the beaches and every 200 yards or so there was a furious game of futbol (soccer) going on with the ball usually ending up kicked out into the raging surf. It's amazing how far even a 7-year-old can boot a soccer ball.

But in addition to the volleyball and futbol, we saw one group of fellows who used their ingenuity - and quad - to come up with a sport that looked like a lot of fun. We will be adding it to our arsenal of looney things to do on the beach.